


Best Laid Plans

by aerClassic



Category: ATEEZ (Band)
Genre: Clueless Virgins HoHong, Friends With Benefits, Light Mutual Posessiveness, M/M, Pining While Banging, Waxing Fetish Mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-03-17 00:48:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28840392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aerClassic/pseuds/aerClassic
Summary: Hongjoong studiously avoids looking at Yunho, because looking at Yunho usually results inagreeingwith Yunho, and then they end up groaning in a waiting room together getting checked for concussions for reasons not unrelated to their burgeoning careers in freestyle urban parkour.
Relationships: Jeong Yunho/Kim Hongjoong, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 14
Kudos: 187





	Best Laid Plans

Like many of their varied and disastrous misadventures, this one begins because Yunho is a hormone driven idiot with access to high speed wi-fi and an absence of boundaries. 

"We should have practice sex."

Hongjoong considers their positioning: splayed side by side in the middle of Yunho’s childhood bedroom floor, staring up at the scattering of old posters stuck to the walls and the truly horrifying amount of shirtless polaroids they’d taken together with friends tacked in a collage along the edges of a full-length mirror. Yunho is casually tapping their sock clad feet together, fingers of his left hand tucked into Hongjoong’s hoodie pocket for warmth while the other scrolls through instagram, as if all is normal and he hadn’t just suggested taking a trip to bone town for no other reason than he could.

“Um,” he garbles, very intelligently given the circumstances, “what’s, uh— _why_?”

His best friend shrugs. “Why not?”

It’s late and the moonlight filtering in from the open window reflects oddly along the wrinkled smirking face of TVXQ’s U-Know looking down at them from the opposite wall. Hongjoong grimaces back at him and his stupid perfect eyebrows. “I think I’m going to need something other than _why not_ to explain the idea we should have sex.”

“ _Practice_ sex,” Yunho corrects brightly. “So we actually know what we’re doing when we finally get boyfriends for real.”

Hongjoong studiously avoids looking at Yunho, because looking at Yunho usually results in _agreeing_ with Yunho, and then they end up groaning in a waiting room together getting checked for concussions for reasons not unrelated to their burgeoning careers in freestyle urban parkour.

“There are people you can pay for that kind of thing.” Hongjoong squints at the ceiling, trying to wrap his head around where the idea had even come from when they’d been ranking Spiderman actors two minutes ago. “Like, they’ve got the experience _and_ could give you tips.”

Yunho hums a low note of agreement, the hand in Hongjoong’s pocket twisting up in the fabric briefly before relaxing.

“Or you could just watch porn,” Hongjoong points out. “The internet was basically made for it.”

Yunho rolls sideways to blow gustily against the side of Hongjoong’s neck. “I don’t want to just watch porn though. I want actual, tangible, real world experience.”

“So go find someone to hook up with. Why are you trying to drag _me_ into this?” Hongjoong whines, trying and failing to get away from the slobbery mess of Yunho’s mouth aimed at giving him another round of unwanted raspberries. “There’s nothing wrong with not having bedroom experience for your first time around the maypole!”

“Yeah, but I’d rather it be with someone I trust who I know won’t make fun of me because I’ve seen him draw on his eyebrows everyday for a month,” Yunho croons sweetly. "Possibly because of a flaming vodka shot incident."

Hongjoong groans. “Specific.”

“Isn’t it just?” Yunho, apparently tired of trying to get Hongjoong to actually look at him face to face, rolls until he’s propped himself on Hongjoong’s thighs with his hands on Hongjoong’s chest for balance. “Look, I’m not going to force you to do anything if you really don’t want to, but what’s the harm? I’m gay. You’re gay. We’re both inexperienced virgins and we could totally get all the embarrassing trial and error out of the way together instead of with people we’re actually involved with and want to impress.”

Hongjoong takes in Yunho’s triumphant smiling visage with mounting trepidation.

Yunho barrels on, “We can take turns figuring out positions we like _without_ disappointing our partners.”

“I don’t think position preferences are a big enough deal breaker in a relationship to be worried about them before you even start dating,” Hongjoong reasons. 

“What if we’re both exclusively bottoms? Or tops?” Yunho’s bottom lip juts out sadly, eyes huge and wet. “Hongjoong, what if I don’t like anal _at all_? I can’t just find that out spur of the moment!”

Hongjoong thinks fondly of the days when he had a better chance of saying no to Yunho than he does now, like when he was three and could barely process shapes or saying anything other than childhood gibberish. Yunho had been quieter and less beguiling then, covered in dirt and consistently sticky with unknown substances.

Maybe not so different to their present day after all, Hongjoong despairs. 

“Can you not just—” He mimes a crude gesture with his fist, which Yunho glares at and crinkles his nose in distaste. 

“It’s not the same by yourself,” Yunho says haughtily and smooths his hands wide over Hongjoong’s chest. “And anyway, do you really want to start college without losing your v-card?”

“Virginity is an out of date social construct,” Hongjoong grumbles. His heart is hammering so hard against his ribs he’s beginning to wonder if it might come bursting right out of his skin.

Truth be told, he’s never actually seen Yunho as more than just a friend. Someone to run around town with and get into trouble of their own making since they were old enough to be trusted outdoors without parental supervision. There had been a single, brief instant, when they were younger huddled together beneath a bridge hiding from a man pissed at them for stealing one of his many thousands of garden gnomes cluttered near the street, that Hongjoong had thought _maybe_ , but then Yunho had sneezed so hard he’d gotten a bloody nose all over Hongjoong’s new Converse and that was that. It's difficult for him to wrap his head around looking at Yunho and thinking _I want to tap that_ when all he's really ever thought about was if he could get away with shoving peanut butter into Yunho's snapback without his friend noticing just to see what he would do in retaliation. 

Yunho, rounded cheeks flushed pink and black hair a static-y wreck from rolling on the rug beneath them, bites the very bottom edge of his mouth and whispers, “You're the only one I trust not to laugh if I do something stupid, Hongjoong. Please.”

Then again, they were about to go from a small town where the outwardly queer scene consisted of themselves and a person two years their junior to an entirely new densely populated city where the possibilities seemed endless. They could go to _clubs_ that weren't just cleaner pojangmacha with walls instead of a tent. 

Yunho shifts in his lap with an aggravated, needy whine.

Also the getting laid part didn’t seem so bad either. Even if it is Yunho suggesting it.

“Fine,” Hongjoong relents, holding a hand up to stop Yunho from interrupting him. “But first we need to set some ground rules.”

**\-----------------**

Two weeks before they move into the tiny apartment only a short bus ride from campus — and three days after the horrifying conversation they'd had while trying not to make their respective boners obvious — Yunho issues a demand for supplies and somehow manages to force Hongjoong to get them. Which is bullshit, just because he's a few months older doesn't mean he's the one who has to go out and buy, like, an industrial sized tub of lube. And condoms. And whatever else is involved, which Hongjoong isn't going to think about since that way lie danger and the mental image of getting fingerbanged by his best friend out of boredom. 

Hongjoong crouches down low in the middle of the bread aisle of their town’s only grocery, face flamed up horribly judging by the heat radiating down to his chest, and hisses out a low groan of mortification into his kneecaps and the phone held to his cheek. “ _How_ do you not have lube? What kind of gay man are you?”

Yunho makes an equally embarrassed noise back at him. “Dude, shut up. You don’t have any either.”

“Because I’ve only ever needed lotion, mister buttplay,” Hongjoong whisper yells back, immediately regretting it when an old woman rounds the corner just in time to overhear and give him a disturbed, scowling look and power walk her old bedazzled leopard two piece sweatsuit self away. 

Hongjoong watches her go, nauseated, and pulls his beanie further over his forehead to help conceal his identity. It’s one thing to be out, it’s an entirely different ballpark to be saying shit like _lube_ and _buttplay_ right next to the day old wheat bagels. 

“I can’t do this today, man, a little old lady just gave me the evil eyes.”

“Fine. Just come back here and we’ll regroup.” Yunho coughs to cover a laugh, but Hongjoong catches it because they’ve lived in and out of each other’s back pocket since the tender age of two when their mothers plopped them down together in a playpen. “I’ll feed you pizza if you can work up the nerve to buy a box of condoms.”

“Fuck you.”

“That’s the idea,” Yunho laughs in earnest until his voice breaks. “See you in an hour.”

Hongjoong ends up buying the first box he can grab from the endcap without making it obvious he’s trying to buy condoms and apparently buys something calling itself _ribbed for her pleasure_ in a variety of fun and funky fresh neon colors. It’s a little funny in retrospect, but having to hand the box over to the girl who used to call him slurs in their shared maths course while she grimaced at him about it felt a little bit like getting bullied all over again. 

He throws them at Yunho’s head as soon as he finds his way to his house, Yunho’s parents at work and his brother _conspicuously_ absent.

“Okay, what’s the trick,” he asks suspiciously when Yunho doesn’t even pretend to be injured and easily accepts the box of glorified neon water balloons without complaint. 

“No trick.” Yunho grins at him from his place on the family room couch and pats his thighs. “I thought we could work on ground rule number one while everyone is out.”

Ah.

If he wasn’t red before, he is now. Hongjoong’s whole body becomes a pillar of flame because ground rule number one is that they have to work their way up from bare bones intimacy before getting to the...other stuff.

He settles his knees on either side of Yunho's hips, hooks his arms around Yunho’s broad shoulders, and glares at Yunho’s adam’s apple so he doesn’t have to maintain eye contact for this. “This is weird.”

He’s known the size and shape of Yunho’s body for so long that being this up close and personal with him — in Yunho’s lap no less — shouldn’t make his guts feel so hot and squirmy as it does. Yunho’s thumbs dig into the waistband of his jeans until they make contact with Hongjoong’s hip bones, rubbing a hot stripe from the outer edge in toward his navel in a single determined line. 

“It’s only weird if you make it weird.” Yunho leans back until they’re forced to make eye contact and, damn him, he’s not even the slightest bit outwardly uncomfortable or embarrassed. “I probably should have asked this earlier, but do you want to kiss when we do this?”

The question feels like slamming face first into a brick wall, sudden clarity about what they’re doing — and why they’re doing it **—** turning Hongjoong’s innards to liquid mercury. 

He has to clear his throat twice before his voice box catches and he rasps a stilted, “W-we should probably save some firsts for whoever we end up with after this, don’t you think?”

Yunho, who clearly doesn’t respect the concept of shame when he’s about to grind one out with his best friend on a couch he shares with his family, only nods thoughtfully and shifts lower to a more comfortable position. It puts Hongjoong’s crotch distressingly aligned with the barely there bulge in Yunho’s sweatpants and his breath catches, burns away in his chest. Before he can even think about sucking in another lungful, Yunho makes a quiet, barely there sound, and pushes his hips up so they connect.

Hongjoong shivers, goosebumps erupting over his arms and his chest. “You know we can’t come back from this, right? Like, we’re going to have intimate knowledge of each other’s ‘O’ face.”

“I promise not to laugh if yours is ugly,” Yunho replies, sliding his hands up Hongjoong’s shirt undeterred. “Have you been working out?”

“What,” Hongjoong mumbles, too distracted by the heat of Yunho’s hands and the truly impressive amount of skin he can cover just by spreading his fingers wide. 

He honestly didn’t think he’d be able to get it up with his best friend of all people, but Yunho has always had some sort of hidden ability to talk him into anything and his dick is already forming a vested interest in finding out if Yunho is going to put those enormous dog paws on his nipples in the near future. 

“Oh, uh, no, not really. I just run in the mornings.”

Yunho hums appreciatively. “Well you feel awesome. Not, like, ripped, but sturdy.” 

“Please don’t try to compliment your actual crush by calling them _sturdy_ ,” Hongjoong laughs, ending on a choked gasp when his barely there erection brushes against Yunho’s. “Fuck.”

Yunho’s eyes are almost all pupil, laser focused on the outline of his fingers beneath Hongjoong’s shirt going to work on the pebbled tip of his nipples. “This good? I can’t tell if you’re all moan-y because of the chest thing or because our dicks are touching.”

“Please shut up,” Hongjoong groans. He can’t even get his arms to respond to his command to do anything but grip the back of the couch cushions to fight back the tingly rolling waves of _holy hell that feels good_ making his bones all wobbly and awkward in his skin. “But, uh, both? Both are pretty, um—”

He cuts off with an embarrassing breathy sigh that comes from literally nowhere. 

“Yeah?” Yunho grins, all bright-eyed and pleased with himself. “Hey, we should make a bet.”

Hongjoong gives up trying to hold back and buries his face against Yunho’s neck to hide the unintentional moans where they’re more easily muffled. He meets the next slow roll of Yunho’s hips with a bitten off mewl. Why did this feel so good? He’s going to end up chafed and yet his whole body feels like a stretched rubber band already, pulse thrumming insistently in his groin. “What kind of bet?”

He presses down harder on the next meeting of their hips and is rewarded with the satisfying sound of Yunho hissing, fingers spasming on his chest. His friend’s breath turns a touch more erratic and Yunho says, husky, “Whoever cums first has to bottom first.”

“Thought we agreed on blowjobs before graduating to anal,” Hongjoong moans, trying to remember why he was so against this when it feels so fucking good even through the layers of their clothes.

“ _After_ the blowjobs obviously,” Yunho growls. His hips are shifting restlessly, a little more out of sync than thirty seconds ago, and Hongjoong thinks it might be a safe bet if he can just hold out for the two minutes it’ll take for Yunho to blow his load.

“Fine,” Hongjoong agrees, and plays dirtypool by slowly gyrating his hips in a way that seems to make Yunho hilariously shaky and _loud_ in his ear. “Hope you like riding dick you big ass messy bottom.”

“Shut the fuck up you wannabe top,” Yunho counters, already aggressively attacking Hongjoong’s nipples and pressing one hand to the base of his spine to better push them together.

His dick is so hard he could probably cut diamonds at this point, but Hongjoong takes pleasure in the knowledge that Yunho isn’t any better. Every push-pull sensation of their hips, every hasty overeager slant of their cocks butting up against one another just means he’s that much closer to making Yunho lose his mind so he can finally chase the release hovering just out of reach.

It ends like most of their time together in that Hongjoong caves first. Unlike the other times though, this involved Hongjoong capitulating to the relentless press of Yunho’s body beneath him by seizing up on a gentle yet hurried pass of Yunho’s thumb to his right nipple and a sneaky barely there caress of his ass through his underwear. He has to bite the curve of Yunho’s shoulder so that he doesn’t scream, which Yunho is apparently into and sends his friend careening over that precipice with him with a stuttered thrust of their hips together and high pitched whine in Hongjoong’s ear.

Hongjoong muzzily notes his pants and his underwear feel disgusting. Damp and sticky and awful now that his erection is flagging and the haze of jacking off — did it count as jacking off? — with his best friend finally begins to dissipate. For the most part it's _fine_. He can sort of picture someone else in Yunho's place if he doesn't think too hard about now possessing new and illicit information about what Yunho looks and sounds like when he's getting off and cumming in his pants. 

He just makes out the gravely sound of Yunho muttering, “Damn,” and, “I look like a gremlin, but you get to look fucking adorable when you cum, what the fuck? _Not_ _fair_.”

Hongjoong manages a snickering, “Sucks to suck loser,” and scowls when Yunho reminds him that he gets to be the first sacrifice to the anal gods later when they figure out the logistics required. Yunho is at least benevolent enough to lend him a pair of old joggers that had shrunk in the wash while they destroy a pizza and watch episodes of One Piece until Yunho’s brother gets home and starts bitching about having to sanitize the living room because Hongjoong apparently has _sex hair_.

"I don't have sex hair," Hongjoong denies in his own defense as if 'dry humping your best friend' was a hairstyle instead.

“Yes, you do! It’s really obvious and gross and I hate the both of you.”

Yunho just throws a breadstick at his brother’s head and says, “Go away, we’re watching anime.”

**\-----------------**

Hongjoong expects things to get strange between them for the obvious reasons. He expects their dynamic to change, for Yunho to get quiet and squirrelly when he finally realizes that doing the do with your best friend just because you want the experience isn’t normal or good or sane or any number of ways to describe the thing they really shouldn’t be doing if they weren’t driven by hormones ninety-nine percent of the time. 

What he doesn’t expect is for Yunho to show up outside his window — on the second floor — with a plastic bag around one arm, a maniacal grin on his face, shouting insane shit like, “It’s ball waxing day!” without an ounce of shame.

“Dear _god_ ,” Hongjoong yells at him once he’s gotten Yunho inside, away from the prying ears and eyes of the neighborhood. “What are you doing? Why are you screaming about waxing your balls?”

Yunho dangles the bulging plastic around his wrist. “Because I have the stuff? I thought it would be fun taking turns to see who cries the most.”

“It’s not even noon,” Hongjoong says nonsensically and, “I don’t want to wax my balls.”

Yunho drops to Hongjoong’s bed like he owns the place and begins unloading his waxy hoard on Hongjoong’s bed sheets. “Yeah, but you did say you wanted to try waxing your ass not that long ago which is sort of the same thing. It’s ball waxing adjacent pretty much _literally_.”

The window is still unlocked and Hongjoong, eye twitching, seriously debates bodily flinging himself from it to escape.

“I was high out of my mind when I said that and you know it,” Hongjoong whines to no avail because Yunho ignores him to continue carefully stacking the boxes and reading the labels for instructions. “Yunho—”

“I’m going to go borrow a bowl from the kitchen and heat this stuff up,” Yunho says distractedly. “This says we should take at least a five minute warm shower or bath first, so you can do that while I do this.”

He watches Yunho disappear down the stairs wondering how it is he’s gotten to this point and decides, no, he really doesn’t want to think too hard about this whole _thing_. 

“Why am I going first?” He yells from the doorway to Yunho’s shitty, “Because you’re the oldest!”

His annoyance carries him through the hottest shower he can handle in a bid to use up all the hot water before Yunho takes his turn. He doesn’t bother getting dressed again after, since by now they’ve seen each other naked enough times that Hongjoong could probably draw all of Yunho’s moles and scars and embarrassing butt pimples from memory alone, but does take the towel with him to his bedroom so they don’t get wax all over the place. All of his stuff is either boxed up in preparation for the move or currently in use anyway, and he really doesn’t want to have to explain to his mom that he’s washing his sheets for the second time in a week because Yunho decided to get a bug up his ass about being waxed smooth before noon on a random Tuesday. 

Yunho takes his naked entrance in stride, unbothered as always, and holds up the terrifying amount of warmed wax in Hongjoong’s mother’s second best tupperware. “Alright, lay down on the bed and spread ‘em.”

“This is degrading,” Hongjoong grumbles, but does as he’s asked by lying down and spreading his legs wide. He’s never felt this open and exposed in his life, but he trusts Yunho, for some reason, and they’ve been friends long enough he knows Yunho won’t laugh or make fun of him for the state of his taint or whatever. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing? If we end up at the hospital because you ripped off my butthole—”

“Quit worrying.” Yunho lays out a handful of fabric strips and wooden popsicle sticks. “I’m a professional.”

“You’re a damn liar is what you are,” Hongjoong grouches against his arms folded beneath his chin. 

“Yeah, yeah.” 

Yunho’s hands on either side of his cheeks makes Hongjoong’s throat burn, unsure how he feels letting his best friend spread him open like this, but the self-conscious moment of vulnerability is quickly overshadowed by the sudden shock of wax getting spread liberally down his crack. 

Hongjoong hisses, resisting the urge to push Yunho away. “Warn a man next time!”

Yunho makes a considering noise while pressing the first strip of fabric to the wax, gives a casual, “Nah,” and unceremoniously rips the strip away.

Once, when they were eight, the pair of them had escaped the fenced garden in Yunho’s backyard to go explore the weird industrial park only a block away from his home. It was the day after a rainstorm and Hongjoong had made the mistake of crawling on top of a cement cylinder meant for drainage installations, slipped on the slick surface, and landed so hard on his back the wind was knocked right out of him, gasping like a fish on the ground in pain while Yunho cried over him thinking he was dying. That day feels a lot like this, all encompassing pain and a sudden lack of air as he tries to scream, wordless and awful and wheezing between his teeth.

Yunho replaces the fabric with his hand, somehow chilled, and presses down so the hurt and the sting are easier to ignore. “Fuck, sorry, did that hurt? Do I need to find you a stick to bite down on?”

“Of course it hurts,” Hongjoong chokes out after a minute of breathless wheezing. He’s unashamed to admit there are tears clouding his vision. “Just get the rest over with so I can go sit in a tub of ice.”

Yunho goes quiet for the rest of the strips, the wax going from unbearable to warm to ignorable sometime after the sixth run. Hongjoong’s body thrums with an ache from clenching up tight until he’s more focused on the burn in the cramping of every single one of his muscles instead of the sharp sting of hairs being mercilessly ripped out from a tender area. His only consolation is that if getting his butt waxed hurts _this much_ , at least Yunho is going to be suffering ten times worse getting his balls polished to a shine. He vindictively hopes Yunho cries so hard he blows snot bubbles.

“You’re done,” Yunho finally whispers after an agonizing ten minutes, though his fingers are still resting unerringly along Hongjoong’s hole for god knows what reason. Probably to keep it from falling off given Hongjoong’s luck. “You — uh — you look good down here if it makes you feel any better.”

“It doesn’t, but thanks.” Hongjoong hides his face away and sniffles against his comforter. “I don’t think it’s enough to warrant doing this ever again, though. That hurt like a sonofabitch.”

Yunho makes a noncommittal noise, fingers unmoving, until he’s clearing his throat. “Hey, can I try something?”

“If it’s more wax, you can fuck right off and fall out my window,” Hongjoong retorts, but glances back so he can take in the terrible scarlet stain adorning Yunho’s cheeks. “What?”

Yunho is still staring transfixed at Hongjoong’s freshly waxed butt as if he’s been hypnotized. “Can I — I mean, I know we don’t have lube or anything, but can I try fingering you for like a second? You’re so _smooth_.”

If ever there was a statement that warranted a kick in the nose, it’s this one. Hongjoong rolls over to smash both feet against Yunho’s face while his friend squawks and pinwheels his arms to maintain his balance.

“You get anywhere _near_ it with anything that isn’t ice or a cold rag for the next two days and I will _murder_ you,” Hongjoong seethes at Yunho’s irritated and pouting face. “Go take your shower so I can regain some of my dignity.”

“And to read the instructions,” Yunho adds, but does as he’s told despite the muttered, “Can’t even compliment pretty buttholes in this house.”

Yunho has the nerve to come bouncing back from his stint in the bathroom with a jaunty hitch in his step and his dick already at half-mast. Hongjoong grimaces at him while Yunho makes himself comfortable on the bed, arms folded beneath his head and legs spread wide to give him room to work.

“I feel like you’re getting too much of a kick out of this,” Hongjoong says suspiciously. 

Yunho shrugs one shoulder casually. “Sometimes I pop wood when I’m nervous, just ignore it.”

Generally speaking, Hongjoong ignores a lot when it comes to coping with being Jeong Yunho’s best friend from childhood and beyond, like pretending not to hear Yunho whisper convincing arguments about breaking into their old middle school to draw dicks on all the chalkboards. This, though, is —

Hongjoong coughs to cover his discomfort. He’s seen Yunho naked. Yunho has seen _him_ naked (and at this point has fully eyeballed his asshole, which is just super duper, truly). And while Hongjoong hadn’t gotten up close and personal with Yunho’s dick yesterday on the couch, he wasn’t expecting the full view of it to be this impressive. It didn’t _feel_ this big when it was hidden beneath sweatpants and underwear. It doesn't help that Hongjoong is incredibly goddamn gay, Yunho is objectively attractive, and the combination of the two are battling it out in his brain threatening to either a) send him into an existential crisis about being physically attracted to his best friend or b) give him a headache. Maybe both. _Definitely_ both.

“Well, one thing is for sure,” Hongjoong says with a nervous lick of his lips, slowly stirring the wax to keep it pliable and to give himself a distraction from _hot naked man on my bed_. “I can honestly say I’m not a size queen.”

Yunho bops his feet idly. “Why?”

“Because that thing is terrifying and I’m pretty sure I don’t want it anywhere near my ass.”

Yunho’s shocked laughter is quickly doused by Hongjoong viciously slathering a glob of wax near the base and ripping it away without warning, payback for earlier in one swift motion. Yunho’s breath stutters, his dick jumps, and his once flagging erection comes back with a vengeance that makes Hongjoong wince. He’d gotten hard somewhere in the middle too, but it was more out of pained reflex than pleasure and he guesses Yunho is suffering the same.

“Payback’s really a bitch, huh?”

His friend breathes hard for a moment and mumbles a throaty, “Uh huh.”

Yunho makes odd, stifled noises on every pass, gets twitchy when Hongjoong has to — goddamn this is weird — shift his balls around to get into all the odd angles as he works his way around. Yunho is still hard though and has stayed hard the entire time, even when the wax had gone a little too stiff and wouldn’t come off in one smooth strip like the rest. Maybe it’s something to do with the nerves in that area getting fucked with constantly. Hongjoong winces a little in sympathy.

“Hold your dick out of the way for me,” Hongjoong demands, now holding a rewarmed bowl of wax. 

“‘Kay,” Yunho agrees easily enough, all breathy and wide eyed about it while he keeps it held to the side. He’s got tears beading up along his lashline, his free hand pushed up against his mouth presumably to muffle his crying. 

The last strip applied, Hongjoong pauses to ask, “Yunho, hey, are you alright?”

Yunho sucks in a tight breath, flushed red chest inflating, and wheezes between his fingers, “Fine, just fine —”

Well then. Hongjoong lets the last strip rip. As soon as it’s done, Yunho goes rigid, grabs Hongjoong’s wrist almost hard enough to hurt, and spills over his belly and the irritated skin at his base, cum pooling up in his navel.

Hongjoong blinks and says, “Oh,” and, “what?”

His only answer is Yunho gurgling something that might have been a word that ends on a brainless, “ _Holy shit_ ,” of surprise.

Deciding reaching out to touch your buddy’s cum pearled up on the head of his dick is probably not good etiquette, Hongjoong opts instead to ask, “Was that...was it _that_ good to you?”

Yunho is still panting, tiny little hitching mewls rumbling in his throat. “I don’t know? Honest to god it just kinda happened.” He finally looks down, horribly red and sheening with sweat. “Sorry.”

“It’s—” _Hot as hell and confusing as fuck, do it again._ Hongjoong swallows tight. “It’s fine. Want some ice?”

“I need a gatorade,” Yunho sighs blissfully at Hongjoong’s ceiling. “Feeling a quart low after that.”

**\-----------------**

Hongjoong spends the next week and a half avoiding all of Yunho’s texts requesting to hang out or to pick out apartment decor or asking if he wants to go terrorize his brother one last time before they leave. He never should have agreed to the practice sex request. He never should have made the ground rules based around working up from the bare bottom rung of heavy petting to oral to whatever next step is in a sexual relationship. He never should have watched Yunho cum.

It makes him angry, just a little, that in the dark of the night Hongjoong finds himself glaring at all the pictures they’ve taken together wishing he could get his stupid dumbfuck brain to shut up for one second so he has a chance to remember he’s not actually attracted to Yunho, his body is just reacting to the sensations and the visuals of him getting off. Anyone would be hard pressed to stay neutral when a guy — who is gorgeous, as any impartial observer would think he’s gorgeous —

His mother knocks on his doorframe before poking her head in, “Hongjoong, is everything alright? We haven’t seen Yunho around lately.”

“It’s fine. We’re fine.” Hongjoong scrapes his palms down his face and hopes to god his voice doesn’t betray the riotous swirl of conflicting emotions he experiences when he hears the name. “Just, you know, packing is taking up a lot of our time before the big move on Saturday.” 

He can hear her hum. “Well, be that as it may, I’d like it if we could all sit down as a family for dinner at least once before he steals you away. I know your father wants to read him his rights before you and your boyfriend go off to college cohabitating from the jump.”

Rehab is expensive, but Hongjoong is willing to pay whatever it takes since clearly his parents have gone off the deep end and started drinking or smoking worse things than weed causing hallucinations that last into their waking hours.

He digs a finger in his ear thinking — hoping — he’d heard wrong. “Excuse me, what?”

She huffs. “I said bring your boyfriend over. We adore Yunho, but he’s not getting a free pass. Your father has had his speech ready ever since you came out to us, what was it now? Three? Four years ago?”

“It was two,” Hongjoong garbles, “I was sixteen!”

“Oh, whatever,” his mother waves him away. “Either way you two need to coordinate a dinner night with your families before you two go off to Seoul.”

Because he has a deathwish, Hongjoong calls Yunho the second she disappears back down the hallway.

“You will not _believe_ the insane shit that just came out of my mother’s mouth,” Hongjoong torpedoes as soon as the call connects and before Yunho can get a word in edgewise. “Just — fucking guess what she said to me.”

“It’s almost eleven,” Yunho yawns down the receiver. “Wh—”

“She thinks we’re _dating_ ,” Hongjoong howls with righteous homosexual anger. “Just because we’re both gay! And friends! This is all _your fault_!”

“Me?” Yunho asks indignantly, and apparently thinks better of it by following that with a profoundly inappropriate, “Wait, that could work in our favor though. I could come over to suck your dick right now and your parents wouldn’t even question it.”

Hongjoong howls, “What the fuck,” but is met with Yunho’s enthusiastic, “See you in however long it’ll take to scale the trellis. I think my best time is two minutes!”

“I can’t stand you sometimes,” Hongjoong furiously whispers over the lip of his windowsill where Yunho is trying to scale the side of his house at breakneck speed.

Yunho heaves himself into the room with a grunt and a loud thwap of his overnight bag hitting the floor. “Did you even time me?”

“Did you not—” Hongjoong freezes with his hands wringing his shirt. “Time you?”

Yunho purses his mouth. “My record, Hongjoong. Keep up.”

“No one cares about your house climbing record,” he deadpans. “Would you focus? They think we’re dating! While cohabitating! How are we supposed to date and bring home boyfriends if my parents are convinced we’re involved?”

“You mean how can _you_ bring home a boyfriend who isn’t me,” Yunho corrects. “ _My_ parents recognize I am a free spirit and therefore untamable and god help whoever ends up dating me for real. Now, take your pants off.”

“I feel like maybe we’ve crossed the boundaries of what is considered normal friendship behavior,” Hongjoong tells the popcorn texture of his bedroom ceiling since Yunho tips him over by taking him out by the kneecaps like a linebacker on steroids to get him to lie back. “What if I don’t want to get my dick sucked?”

“Then you’d be lying because I can literally see your boner.” Yunho stands over him with his hands on his hips. “I read this article earlier about what to do with your teeth and I wanna try it out. Is that okay?”

“The fact you’re actually reading articles about the fine art of blowjobs is a travesty,” Hongjoong despairs, and, “I think we need to hit pause on this whole thing until I can get my parents straightened out. At least until tomorrow.”

Yunho huffs but agrees, flopping down to the empty spot near the wall and flailing until they’re both snuggled up underneath the covers. 

“You realize they’re not going to believe you when we get up for breakfast right,” he slurs against Hongjoong’s neck, all hot breath and big hands tucked up Hongjoong’s shirt for warmth. 

“Worst case scenario we stage a really dramatic yet friendly breakup,” Hongjoong says, heavy lidded, reaching up to twist their hands together because he likes to feel anchored when they cuddle. “Go to sleep, sasquatch.”

Yunho just bites his shoulder, gently, in retaliation and falls asleep that way, his mouth spread wide and drooling over Hongjoong’s cotton pajama top. Hongjoong’s mother finds them in the same position the next morning and coos at them to stay still so she can take a commemorative photo to share with Yunho’s mom and, really, it shouldn’t have surprised Hongjoong that his mother would betray him so totally to the enemy.

“Untamable, huh?” He grumbles around scrambled egg while Yunho kicks him in the shin from across the table.

  
**\-----------------**   
  


The move is more stressful than Hongjoong was anticipating and he spends the three hour drive to their new home obsessing over cables he might have forgotten or the expensive trainers Yunho bought three days before still in the box, maybe still in Yunho’s closet with everything they need to survive the next month somehow shoved in next to the heels. To his credit, Yunho only rolls his eyes behind his ridiculous oversized sunglasses and forcefully threads their hands together over the gearshift. 

“Hongjoong, it’s _fine_. I already told you I triple checked we had everything like five times before we even got in the car.” He squeezes once in reassurance. “When have I ever let us go anywhere without all our necessities?”

“There’s always a first time for everything,” Hongjoong cries in near hysterics. “What if I forgot my toothbrush? All my underwear? My _laptop_?”

“Most of those things are easily fixed by going to the store and your laptop is literally behind you in the floorboard of the backseat. I watched you put it there with my own two eyes."

Hongjoong frets the entire way to the apartment, while getting their keys from the main office and their brokerage agent, and during the elevator ride up towards the fourth floor where their tiny little split studio awaits. Yunho takes his box of books and cables when they make it in, removes the strap of his laptop from Hongjoong’s shoulder.

“You’re too tense,” he says smoothly while directing Hongjoong to their new couch. “Let me try something, yeah?”

“Talking me down from a ledge shouldn’t count as foreplay,” Hongjoong disparages, but allows Yunho to knock away his belt buckle and pull his jeans off without protest. “Seriously? Now?”

“Seriously,” Yunho murmurs in a dark baritone. “Now.”

He does wait with his fingers curled over the elastic waistband of his underwear for Hongjoong to actually nod before pulling them down. Slow, slow, and slower still either to work up the nerve to suck dick or out of some chivalrous instinct to let Hongjoong get acclimated to being half-naked before they’d even unpacked. Seeing Yunho on his knees, between his thighs and zeroed in on his crotch, does something unacceptable to the rhythm of Hongjoong’s heartbeat — a stutter stop sensation that reminds him of the aging sedan they drove here in. 

Yunho’s hot hand encompasses him totally, unsurprisingly considering Hongjoong isn’t quite ready to go so-to-speak, but the visual makes him shiver. 

“Alright, so, I don’t know how good this will be so you gotta talk me through it a little bit, okay?" Yunho tenderly works his arm until Hongjoong is a gasping trembling mess in his hand, rock solid and twitchy. “I tried to practice on my fingers, but that’s not really the same.”

“Why didn’t you practice on a toy or something?” Hongjoong knocks his head back on the couch as Yunho tentatively sticks his tongue out to lick a tiny section of skin right near the tip. 

His friend laughs, breathless, “You think I’ve got some hidden stockpile of toys when we didn’t even have _lube_ between the two of us?” Yunho directs Hongjoong’s hands from their vice grip on the cushion’s edge to his hair. “In case I do something bad and you need to pull me off.”

“Right,” Hongjoong whimpers raggedly, fingers flexing in the silky strands. He doesn’t really have a chance to appreciate Yunho’s impressive haircare routine, because in the next second Yunho is making a vague contemplative noise and diving down to swallow around Hongjoong’s cock like he’s trying to—to _eat him_. 

It’s like being punched in the gut. Any blood Hongjoong thought he’d had in his head rushes immediately south where the awkward wet suction of Yunho’s mouth is threatening to make him spill in ten seconds flat. 

“Fuck, that’s— _f_ _uck_ ,” Hongjoong half-moans, half-whispers to himself out of sheer mortification. 

Yunho pulls off after another few seconds of trying to work his tongue at any sort of angle and coughs, spit trailing from his mouth to the tip of Hongjoong’s dick in a filthy line. “Was that good?”

“I don’t think I can judge what’s good and what isn’t, honestly,” Hongjoong admits, trembling all over from the rush. 

“Well, _try_ ,” Yunho pissily requests, “We’re practicing here. There’s gotta be some benchmark of good blowjob versus bad blowjob.”

Hongjoong allows a pitchy, half-hearted complaint slip — “Well it’s bad right now because you quit.” — that Yunho sees as a challenge and swoops back in. He takes it slower this go around, lipping his way around the head and placing wet-mouthed kisses down to the base and back up again. Hongjoong would be embarrassed at how worked up he is about it, but Yunho doesn’t seem to mind, even goes so far as to make a pleased noise at the amount of pre gathering at the tip.

He makes the mistake of looking down only once and catches Yunho looking right back up at him, cheeks dark red and pink mouth suctioned around Hongjoong’s cock. If the physical sensations weren’t enough, the visual is the last one-two punch that sends an electric pulse sizzling up from the very base of his spine.

Hongjoong tugs frantically at Yunho’s hair with a high-pitched, “Y-Yunho, get off, I’m gonna—”

He seems reluctant, but the second Yunho pulls away, hand still moving where his mouth had just been, he catches Hongjoong’s release on his cheek, dripping down to his chin and spilling over his knuckles.

Yunho blinks rapidly. “Wow.”

Hongjoong covers his face with both hands and laughs, still shivery with aftershocks. “Shut the fuck up immediately.”

“But _Hongjoong_ ,” Yunho excitedly begins, “Hongjoong, I did good right? It was okay?”

“I’ve never gotten a blowjob before so I don’t _know_.” He can feel Yunho bouncing on his heels from the shift of Yunho’s hand still holding him in a loose grip. “And quit — quit touching me, I’m oversensitive.” 

“Oh right.” Yunho grins at him sheepishly. “Sorry, forgot I was still doing that.”

His mouth is so wet and swollen it almost appears bruised. His face is veritably half-covered in jizz and spit, and yet as soon as Yunho smiles—

Hongjoong’s heart does that weird thing again, only this time Yunho isn’t hovering his mouth over Hongjoong's dick and they aren’t in the car with terrible suspension. The universe, he decides, is an ugly vindictive bitch, because god fucking goddammit. 

“Just go wash your face.”

Yunho offers a tiny two fingered salute and disappears into the bathroom. Hongjoong falls back against the couch to stare unseeing into the middle distance.

He might actually like Yunho. As more than a friend.

 _Shit_.  
  
  


**\-----------------**

Hongjoong decides to push that idea down into the deep dark recesses of his mind since it was clearly only an intrusive thought borne of getting blown for the first time than it is out of any actual attraction. He’s seen Yunho in the worst sort of states, you can’t watch a man crush his balls trying to jump over bollards outside of a Target and still respect him enough to try and date him. And Yunho had done it _twice_. He literally cannot be catching feelings for his best friend just by virtue of they've seen and done too much silly shit together for romance to somehow blossom between them now.

And since they don’t get internet activated until tomorrow, he supposes the only real way to pass the time after they order takeout and set up exactly one bed for the night is to return the favor.

Yunho has both arms folded over his nose making punch drunk noises as if Hongjoong barely fisting him in one slicked hand is somehow an amazing, breath stealing experience.

“I’m not even doing anything,” Hongjoong says doubtfully. “Why are you so noisy?”

Yunho’s knees clench inward against Hongjoong’s hips where he’s kneeled between them on the bed. “Just. Never had anyone who wasn’t me touch my dick, you know? _You know_.”

He hums. This is the second time he’s seen it, but it’s still a shock to see just how long and, really there’s no other word for it, _girthy_ Yunho’s dick is as if Hongjoong has anything to compare it to other than himself. He can still close his hand in a fist though, which means he’s not going to damage anything trying to unhinge his jaw to get Yunho’s cock in his mouth. 

_Don't think about it_ , Hongjoong viciously reminds himself. _Don't think, don't think, don't think!_

Still, he has no idea what he’s doing. Even smoothing his hand up and down the velvety skin of Yunho’s junk feels clumsy and stupid when he’s used to doing this at a different angle with more ambient lighting from muted porn playing on his phone. Hongjoong, bizarrely, finds himself quaking with the intimidating urgent fear of not being good, of fucking this up to the point Yunho is somehow turned off by the idea of sex forever. Not necessarily with him, specifically, but in general. Like Hongjoong is somehow going to be so bad at giving head, Yunho is going to leave him all alone in Seoul to live out in the wilderness as a mountain man on a mission of celibacy.

“Should I be trying anything specific?” 

Yunho giggles into his elbows. “Yeah, you can actually put your mouth on me for starters.”

“Ugh, I meant you’re the one who did all that so-called _research_ , but — nevermind.” Hongjoong eyes the flushed tip speculatively, feels Yunho jerk a little in his grip. “Ready?”

“I’ve been ready, you — fff—” Yunho’s voice peters out into a horribly pitchy whine deep in his throat before ending in a near silent wheeze.

Leaning in to just _go for it_ was probably not his best and brightest idea, but listening to Yunho make noises like he’s trying not to die is sort of satisfying over the sound of his blood rushing in his ears. He chokes a little trying to get him all the way down to the root, ends up gagging three times before he can get an angle that allows him to breathe, but it’s fine. Sucking dick is a lot easier than he thought and not as bad as he’d feared. Yunho just tastes like sweat and skin, warm and heady, the tiniest amount more bitter than Hongjoong was expecting, though nothing he can't handle. His jaw aches almost instantly. 

It’s claustrophobic, mostly because Yunho keeps crushing his head with his bony-ass giant knees until Hongjoong gives up and holds them down so he can try this handsfree. Holding Yunho’s legs means Yunho shifts his hips instead and ends up thrusting upwards against Hongjoong’s face so hard he chokes, has to pull away to cough into the seam of Yunho’s thigh, while Yunho profusely apologizes and then ruins it by coming all over Hongjoong’s neck.

“Are you serious?” Hongjoong asks over the sound of Yunho’s cackling. “Boy, you are not right.”

“Sorry, sorry,” Yunho gasps out between giggles. “That was awesome though. I mean, _clearly_.”

“It’d be more awesome if I didn’t have to wash cum out of my hair at the end of it.” Hongjoong grimaces as the warm wetness seeps down the collar of his shirt. “You owe me breakfast.”

Yunho finally calms and grins down his trunk at him. “I’ll make you pancakes in the morning.”

It’s only after they’ve settled down for the night, and Hongjoong is finally cum free, that the self-conscious afterburn hits and he cringes in on himself, curved toward Yunho’s back like an open parenthesis. 

He’s not sure if Yunho is even awake, but Hongjoong lets out a hushed, “Was I decent at it?”

“You were better than decent.” Yunho reaches back without looking to pull Hongjoong’s arm across his side to settle against his belly. “Solid ten out of ten experience. You’re going to make some guy cream himself in five seconds flat.”

“Big words from someone who took at least ten minutes,” Hongjoong grumbles, but Yunho only kicks a foot back to hook their ankles together and demands Hongjoong go to sleep. 

**\-----------------**

They don’t manage to unpack Yunho’s bed for another two weeks, by which time Yunho has gotten exponentially better at giving head through frequent and enthusiastic practice. He does it in the morning when Hongjoong is still fuzzy-eyed with sleep; blindsides Hongjoong after lunch as a reward for not burning the apartment down reheating leftovers; sneaks his way into the shower three times and ends up choking himself on the last run when Yunho’s knees slip in washed away suds and goes face first into Hongjoong’s crotch.

“I think maybe you’re speeding ahead of me in the practice department,” Hongjoong informs both the television and Yunho nursing a cup of tea from his spot on the floor, back against the couch so he could finagle Hongjoong’s legs over his shoulders for whatever reason. Hongjoong has long since stopped questioning the things Yunho does. “Like if we were actually keeping count, I’d be losing by a wide margin. I thought this was supposed to be a back-and-forth arrangement?”

“In theory, yeah.” Yunho doesn’t seem bothered. “But you know I need more time practicing than you do. You’ve always been awesome at everything right at the start, unlike _me_ who has to spend hours trying before I get it perfect.”

Hongjoong threads his fingers through Yunho’s fringe, uncertainty turning his insides to the trembling equivalent of a ball of snakes writhing trying to escape. “You say that, but the one time I tried, um,” he coughs, “ _you know_ , it took so much longer.”

Yunho sets his mug on the coffee table and leans his head back, cheeks squishing a little between Hongjoong’s thighs. “Are we really talking about this?”

“I guess.” Hongjoong worries at the inside of his lip. “This whole thing started because you wanted us to be good at sex stuff so I need some feedback here.”

Yunho laughs, then groans, and ends up trapping Hongjoong’s legs between his arms and his head when he closes his hands over his face to hide the pink flush spreading over the bridge of his nose. “The only reason it took me so long compared to you is because that was the second time I orgasmed that day, not the first. It always takes me a little longer on the next go around.”

Hongjoong blinks and says, “Oh,” thinks better of it and adds, “But when did you have time to jack off? We were unpacking for the rest of the day.”

Yunho peeks at him between his fingers, even the skin around his eyes is turning colors, and mumbles, “I came in my pants when you came on my face.”

Air catching in his lungs, Hongjoong can’t decide if the idea of Yunho coming totally untouched in his underwear is hot or if the idea that Yunho gets off on other people getting off is hotter. It’s likely both, and the new world tilting information sends Hongjoong’s imagination careening down new avenues: is this why Yunho has been blowing him so much recently? Because it gets him going as much as it does Hongjoong? 

He swallows. “Yunho—”

“So you definitely don’t need the practice or whatever it is you’re so worried about,” Yunho bulldozes over him. “It was good. _You’re_ good. I’m sure you’ll be better than me at the other thing too whenever we get around to it.”

“Anal, you mean,” Hongjoong manages through the intense beat of his heart, tripping over itself at the compliment for reasons he refuses to analyze. 

“Obviously.” Yunho turns back to the drama they’ve only been half-assed watching. “No rush, but we do start classes next week.”

“Right.”

So, Hongjoong buys lube. Or, more lube anyway. Yunho had actually gone out and been proactive about their supply situation and brought home twelve different boxes of condoms and three types of scented lubricant to match. 

“I panicked, okay?” Yunho fretted over his new hoard with an expression on his face like he wanted to cry. “There were just so many options I didn’t know what to grab!”

But that supply had dwindled fast — faster than Hongjoong supposes is normal considering his old lotion bottles would last at least a month back home.

Unfortunately the scented stuff makes Hongjoong’s nose twitch and his skin was a little rashy after working Yunho over that one time he’d tried, so he opts instead for a huge tube of something that claims to be unscented and better for sensitive skin. He also buys a whole host of things he’d never even thought about needing _just_ to have sex, but that the internet informs him is priority number one. There are words like _douching_ and _hoses_ and by the end of his adventure Hongjoong kind of wants to curl up under a blanket and nurse hot cocoa like a trauma victim on network dramas. 

Which he does. 

Hongjoong waits until Yunho goes off to his required three hour orientation meeting at the dance department, works up the nerve to do all the prepwork, and then sits delicately back down on their couch to wait, fingers drumming on his thighs while he pictures what’s going to happen when Yunho comes home. Should he light candles? Maybe put on mood music?

Hongjoong bites at his nails while staring unseeing at the blankness of the television. 

Doing anything other than blindsiding Yunho with the offer to fuck him senseless feels too much like he's trying to impress him, almost like a date or like he’s somehow trying to wrestle romance out of his best friend who only wants to fuck around.

When they were younger, and the embarrassing clutch of puberty hadn’t yet descended on them, it had always been Hongjoong that took it upon himself to be the one to shield Yunho from bad things, like the evil cat who lived down the block or the german shepherd that growled a little too long at them from behind the fence, and would take the fall if Yunho got into trouble for trying to pet them anyway. He wonders if that’s what he’s doing now, shielding Yunho from all the bad aspects about sex by agreeing to let him get all the awkward firsts out of the way without someone else there to laugh or get angry at him.

He’s saved from thinking too much about it by the sound of the door lock clicking over, by Yunho groaning into the wood from the other side and slumping his way into their shared living area with sweat still clinging to the ends of his hair.

“Rough day?”

“A little,” Yunho agrees tiredly, scruffing at his chin and flapping his shirt for airflow along his sternum. “We had to do a lot of basics and learn one routine before the teacher let us go. I guess she wanted to know what the baseline experience level was for the whole class so she can split us up.”

Hongjoong can only hum noncommittally, stomach still clenching with an empty ache. “You should probably grab a shower then.”

“Yeah,” Yunho grimaces. His bag drops to the floor with a loud thump of fabric and the metallic clang of his water bottle. “Are you okay? You’re acting weird.” He walks over to pluck at the blanket Hongjoong had surrounded himself in. “What’s goin — why are you _naked_?”

The blanket droops over one shoulder all the way down to his hip and Hongjoong sighs hard through his nose. He says, “Just go take a shower,” and watches Yunho swallow thick, eyes wide, before speed walking to the ensuite, trying for casual but given away by the overeager hop in his step.

They end up in Yunho’s room, on Yunho’s bed, staring at each other waiting for the go ahead, though Yunho keeps looking at him like he wants to ask the question Hongjoong is furiously trying not to think about or remember.

“So, the prep—”

“We’re not going to talk about it,” Hongjoong interrupts. “You can find out for yourself when it’s _your_ turn.”

“Okay,” Yunho relents easy enough, and then he’s reaching out to thumb over Hongjoong’s chest, tracing down until his fingers catch in the slight folds of skin leading away from his stomach. “I watched a lot of porn so I kinda know what I’m doing, but if it’s bad—”

“I’ll warn you, I promise.” Hongjoong places the newest purchase into Yunho’s empty palm with a whispered, “I trust you.”

Yunho glances at the tube with an expression on his face Hongjoong can’t quite decipher. “I’m not entirely sure that you should.”

“Well, I’m doing it anyway.” Hongjoong falls back and rolls over, stuffing a pillow under his hips for leverage based on the tips he’d read while waiting for Yunho to finally get home. “Do your worst.”

The first press of Yunho’s fingers spreading him open is a shock, but apparently not as much of one as the sight of him because Yunho gasps, fingers spasming, and he husks a ragged, “You’re still waxing?”

“I thought you knew?” Hongjoong buries his face, hot already, into his arms and does his best not to expire from the rush. “You’ve seen me naked enough times by now.”

“Yeah, but I’m always looking at you from the front.” Yunho’s voice is thin and awed, as if seeing Hongjoong smooth back there is some earth shattering revelation. “You keep all that trimmed, so I didn’t know—”

“Well, now you do.” Hongjoong shivers the longer Yunho keeps him spread open and bared to the low lighting from the fading sunset. “Can you please just get on with it?”

The click of the tube is loud, as is Yunho’s choppy overexcited breathing, and it makes Hongjoong’s skin pebble up tight with fear based arousal. He has no idea what this is going to be like, what having Yunho’s fingers and his dick in him is going to feel like since he’s never had the idea to try it for himself. He took the realization that he was attracted to guys at face value and never thought to experiment. It was enough to rub one out quick to porn so he could have more time to hang out with Yunho, a base need to get out of the way without stopping to really think about it.

Yunho takes his time circling a slicked thumb over the tight clench of Hongjoong’s body like he’s trying to massage him into relaxing.

“Hongjoong,” comes out a hoarse whisper, all growly and dark in a way Yunho’s voice has never been. “Hongjoong, can I try something? If it’s bad, I’ll stop, but there’s — I really want to try something.”

Hongjoong presses his face harder against his arms and the bed. “Go for it.”

Yunho’s thumb disappears, trailing down from his hole to the space beneath, and is replaced by the shocking warm wet of Yunho’s tongue flattened against him in one long swipe. It makes Hongjoong’s breath stutter out of his mouth, has the burn of arousal lancing through him at once so bright and so unrelenting that he has to push his mouth to the knuckles of his right hand to hold back a loud moan of pleasure, tears springing to the corner of his eyes. Yunho keeps his mouth spread wide while his tongue does maddening slow circles, tiny jabs to the absolute center, something twisty that makes Hongjoong nearly have to fight his spine to keep from arching up and away, breathless with the urge to scream.

Yunho pulls away. “This okay?” 

Hongjoong only makes a brainless desperate sort of noise in reply and decides not to kick Yunho in the nose when he giggles, obviously pleased with himself.

“Good.” He presses a kiss to the base of Hongjoong’s spine. “Can you roll over for me? Seeing your face will make it easier to tell if what I’m doing is working for you or not.”

“You just want to laugh at me.”

Yunho’s hands spread wide over the back of Hongjoong’s thighs. “I would never laugh at you. Not about this anyway. Come on, man.”

“Fuck you,” Hongjoong whines, voice stil wet with repressed tears. When he wiggles to his back, Yunho is crouched near his knees grinning, mouth and chin glistening and his eyes nearly black. 

“Hi,” Yunho greets. “Still with me?”

“Hey,” Hongjoong hitches out. “Yeah, just — ’s a lot.”

Yunho hums, drooping to place a tender closed mouth kiss next to the base of Hongjoong’s cock while simultaneously sliding a finger home. It’s at once too wet and not wet enough and Hongjoong cringes, whole body locking up from the intrusion. Yunho pulls out slowly with an apologetic throaty sound, shifting forward so Hongjoong’s legs are propped up on his thighs, shifting them more open for easier access.

“Too much?"

“Maybe?” Hongjoong scrunches his nose at the ceiling fan so he’s less focused on Yunho probing his ass. “It’s not bad or anything, it just feels weird.”

Yunho squeezes out another palmful of lube. “Bad weird or good weird?” 

He thrusts his hand a little harder yet somehow still gentle at the same time. Goosebumps erupt over Hongjoong's arms and legs, thighs twitching around Yunho’s hips. 

“G-good weird.” His blood pressure is pulsing so hard Hongjoong can feel it throbbing in aching bursts in his groin with every slow, maddening twist of Yunho’s hand. “You can — you can add another, I think.”

Yunho bites his hip, the sting of it making Hongjoong gasp loud — almost too loud — and clench up tight against his finger. “And _I_ think you’re getting ahead of yourself.”

Against his better judgement — and his very angry erection — Hongjoong allows Yunho to set the pace, otherwise it’s going to end up with him making a fool of himself by complaining and begging Yunho for dick when their relationship doesn’t exactly call for it. Yunho takes his time, keeps Hongjoong on the verge up until he gets fed up with playing around and finally pulls his fingers free.

Getting fucked is a lot more claustrophobic than Hongjoong originally thought. The hot press of Yunho’s cock to his hole feels like he’s pushing out all the air in Hongjoong’s lungs with every slow, deliberate shove of his hips — inch by every body shattering inch. 

“Fuck,” Hongjoong draws out in one long moan, hands fisting the bedsheets as an anchor. “Holy fuck, Yunho—”

“Yeah,” Yunho answers, voice shaking almost as hard as his arms. “Yeah, I know. How are you holding up?”

“Just peachy,” Hongjoong whimpers. He kicks a leg up over Yunho’s shoulder and sees stars, the new angle painful yet so good he thinks maybe he should reconsider his stance on begging. “ _Move_.”

And god bless dance majors because when Yunho hears move he _moves_. All sinuous rolling hips and strong arms keeping Hongjoong trapped under the merciless rolling wave of him.

“You want me to touch you?” Yunho pants somewhere in the middle, thrusts stuttering. 

Hongjoong is so hard and so painfully on the brink he’s not sure how long it’s been, how long he’s been groaning and gasping like an idiot, but he knows if Yunho lays a hand on his dick right now he’s not going to last and he’ll be damned if he cums first again.

“Only if you want me to jizz immediately,” he laughingly admits. “Dear god, dude—”

Yunho laughs too, leaning up so their foreheads connect. “I will if you will.”

Hongjoong chokes out a low, “Ugh, you’re the worst,” before taking himself into his fist and allowing the rocking of their bodies guide his hand. He must clench up when he does it because Yunho gurgles out something low and complimentary, whole body shivering so hard Hongjoong can feel it where they’re connected.

There’s a second where the whole world seems to go fuzzy, orgasm starting to crash through him, that Yunho loses his fucking mind and crushes their mouths together in a bruising, wet kiss, a desperately ardent whine falling between the seam. Hongjoong opens, gasping, and swallows the sound, Yunho’s tongue flexing over his bottom lip as he jerks into the involuntary rhythmic gripping of Hongjoong’s body.

“I thought we said no kissing,” Hongjoong sleepily grumbles after he’d forced Yunho to clean him up and carry him to their tub, barely enough room for him to squeeze into with his knees pressed against his chest. Still, Yunho volunteered to help him wash up, massaging his shoulders and the burgeoning crick in his neck from being bent like a pretzel.

Yunho coughs. “Sorry, heat of the moment.”

“Whatever,” Hongjoong sighs, leaning back to grant Yunho easier access to the worst of the hurt. “It’s fine.”

Yunho’s long fingers reach the worst knobs of pain with ease, working him over with barely any pressure. “This is nice.”

“Hm?”

“You letting me take care of you when it's kind of always been the other way around. It's nice." Another tensed muscle eases under his hands. “You should let me do this more often."

“Not too often or else your imaginary future boyfriend is going to get mad,” Hongjoong is quick to remind him, though Yunho doesn’t reply other than a quiet, “Mhmm” from behind.

It’s only after he’s climbed out — after Yunho had to catch him on the way to bed when his legs had gone numb and the ache in his ass made his spine twinge — that the reality of the situation sinks in. Snuggled down beneath the comforter with Yunho snoring gently against his neck, Hongjoong is wide awake staring at the opposite wall. 

He’d just had sex with his best friend. _Practice_ sex, supposedly, and the only thing Hongjoong can think about is doing it again -- and again, and again, until they’re old and aged and still fighting off the smug know-it-all looks on their parents’ faces. He can’t imagine doing this with anyone else. He can’t imagine _Yunho_ doing this with anyone else, and just the passing thought of someone in his place letting Yunho fuck them open with his tongue makes his throat burn with an angry, jealous rage.

Shit.

_Shit shit shit shit shit._

  
**\-----------------**

Thankfully, Hongjoong doesn’t have long to think about it since classes finally start up and the anxiety of finding his way through campus and not forgetting all of his supplies far outweighs the crisis of the heart he’s experiencing over Yunho. Or at least it _should,_ and was supposed to, but Yunho comes home after his first full day bright-eyed and pink cheeked telling Hongjoong about a guy he'd met in his theory of movement course.

“Wooyoung is really funny,” Yunho excitedly recounts over reheated vegetable lo mein. “He’s kind of a brat so the two of you would get along great.”

Hongjoong viciously stabs the leftover wilted cabbage on his own plate and seethes, “He sounds great, I’m happy you’ve made a friend so soon.”

Yunho beams in response.

For the first month they don’t really mention the sex or the blowjobs in favor of discussing Yunho’s collection of new buddies: Wooyoung, who Hongjoong knows and despises already; San, Wooyoung’s best friend; and Yeosang, who seems like the kind of person Hongjoong would get along with just because Yunho says he spends most of his time emotionally torturing Wooyoung. It’s always Wooyoung _this_ and Wooyoung _that_ and San said _this one thing that was so funny I snorted banana milk out of my nose, Hongjoong_. Yunho does get progressively more handsy when it’s just the two of them together though, always with a hand somewhere on Hongjoong’s body as if he’s trying to stake a claim, which Hongjoong would absolutely let him have if he wasn’t certain this was just Yunho’s way of dry-running how to make a pass at Wooyoung.

“Why don’t you just tell him how you feel?” Mingi questions from across the library table they cleared out for a study session together. “From what you’ve told me about him, I get the feeling Yunho is into you a least a little bit.”

Hongjoong scrapes both hands down his face. “You don’t know him like I do, Mingi. He’s just like that with everyone. Once Yunho decides you’re friend shaped or whatever it is, he turns into this weird octopus creature incapable of keeping his hands to himself.”

Mingi eyes him cautiously. They haven’t really been friends for long and are still in that awkward get to know you phase Hongjoong hasn’t had to endure since—well since he was a baby and his new neighbors _also_ had a baby and thus Yunho had come screaming into his life. 

“But do you _want_ him to keep his hands to himself is the bigger issue.” 

“I—” 

His friend reaches out to close Hongjoong’s laptop, expression intense. “What are you going to do when he comes home with a date? With a boyfriend who isn’t you?”

“I don’t know,” Hongjoong guiltily informs the tragic pencil marked formica table top. “I honestly don’t know, Mingi.”

They quietly regard one another for a long moment before Mingi relaxes. “Jongho and I know someone who is pretty much in the same boat as you. If you want to try and date someone who understands the struggle, I can pass you his number. At the very least you could spend an hour commiserating about useless crushes over burgers or something.”

He’s barely in the doorway before Yunho is crushing him in a hug, bouncing the two of them together with an excited, “I made the first group,” followed by declaring, “I’m going to suck your dick to celebrate!”

Hongjoong can only manage a pitchy, “Excuse me, what?”

Yunho just carries him to Hongjoong’s bedroom, drops him unceremoniously to the bed, and grins wild and unrepentant standing over Hongjoong’s prone and instantly overheating body. “It’s been a while.”

“Y-yeah.” Hongjoong keeps his arms up by his head, worried he’s going to come across as overeager and needy if he scrambles to get his belt undone instead. 

Yunho just blows him a kiss, strips his jeans off with an efficiency that makes Hongjoong blush, and goes down on him with enthusiasm. 

“Wooyoung is in the group with me so I won’t be alone,” Yunho giddily informs him on the comedown from jerking off over Hongjoong’s spent dick. “I think he’s going to throw a party after the first midterm so we can all finally hang out together.”

“Awesome,” Hongjoong croaks, too cummed out to formulate any kind of excuse not to go.

  
**\-----------------**

The friend turns out to be someone named Park Seonghwa. Mingi describes him as a needy manchild, which Jongho smacked him on the back of the head over reminding his partner that Mingi was _worse_. 

“I am _not_ ,” Mingi complained.

Jongho just shot Hongjoong a look that clearly said _see?_ And delicately patted the back of Mingi’s hand. “There, there, dearest. Denial will get you nowhere.”

Hongjoong leaves the apartment while Yunho is still dead to the world on a Saturday morning and meets Seonghwa at a cafe right off the campus proper. It’s very trendy minimalist chic to match the oatmeal colored urban mom aesthetic Seonghwa shows up wearing, big beige peacoat and a white cable knit sweater so thick Hongjoong wonders how deep his fingers would sink if he touched it.

They regard each other warily before Seonghwa sighs, droops down in his seat and whines pathetically, “Boy troubles?”

“Boy troubles,” Hongjoong agrees. “Childhood friend boy troubles, specifically. You?”

“God, don’t even get me started.” Seonghwa’s handsomely chiseled face screws up as if he’d sucked a lemon, elegant tapered fingers dragging down his chin. “I need a drink first.”

Hongjoong snorts. “It’s not even noon.”

“And that is why mankind invented the perfect breakfast drink: the mimosa.” Seonghwa signals to their waiter and orders four.

By the end of the strange not-date they've demolished another two, giggling and stumbling out the door together and laughing about all the ways they’ve embarrassed themselves in front of the people they like. 

“I’m so jealous you’ve actually slept with your guy,” Seonghwa moodily complains at a volume that Hongjoong would not be able to tolerate if he weren’t three sheets to the wind. “Yeosang barely even lets me give him a hug. A hug! And he knows I’m a cuddle slut so he does it to mess with me!”

“That’s rough, buddy,” Hongjoong wheezes between giggles. “Offer to suck him off next time and see where that gets you.”

Seonghwa gasps in mock offense. “Sir! I require romance first!”

“You literally told me you tried to eyeball Yeosang’s dick through his sweatpants like not even an hour ago,” Hongjoong deadpans, “Shut the fuck up about _romance_.”

He must still be pretty out of it when he finally finds his way home because Yunho wakes up while Hongjoong is wrestling with his shoes thinking they’re being home invaded. 

“Where were you this morning?” Yunho blearily rubs at his eyes around a yawn, reaching out to catch Hongjoong when he overcorrects and nearly falls trying not to lose his socks. Yunho sniffs. “Are you _drunk_?”

“Lil’ bit, yeah.” Hongjoong decides being in Yunho’s capable hands is much better than trying to balance anyway and gives in, leans up under his chin so he can rub his nose affectionately at the base of Yunho’s throat. “Was out getting breakfast with Seonghwa ‘nd didn’t want to wake you up. Hi.”

Yunho’s grip around his waist tightens. “Who’s Seonghwa?”

Hongjoong blinks. “Hmm?”

“Who is Seonghwa,” Yunho repeats. “And why were you getting drunk with him so early?”

“He’s a uh—” Hongjoong hiccups. “He’s a friend? I think? He’s nice. Jongho and Mingi introduced me to him.”

Maybe that was the wrong thing to say, because Yunho tenses beneath his hands. 

“Can we go back to bed now,” Hongjoong complains. “‘M tired.”

“Fine.” Yunho directs them towards his bedroom, spoons up behind Hongjoong’s back so he can wind their arms and legs together like interlocking pieces of a puzzle. “But you’re going to tell me everything when you sober up.”

**\-----------------**

Yunho scowls his way through lunch glaring daggers across their kitchen table as if Hongjoong has somehow betrayed him for going on a friend date. With a friend. Who also just happened to be a man attracted to other men. It’s like dealing with his mother’s assumption all over again, only this time it’s his best friend getting pissed Hongjoong potentially found a man before Yunho could.

“Spill.”

Hongjoong is still sort of buzzed, so the combination of the smell of ramen and the angry slant to Yunho’s mouth makes him queasy. “I don’t know what you want from me, honestly.”

“I just want to know who this Seonghwa guy is.” Yunho locks their ankles together beneath the table. “Do you like him? Are you guys going to date?”

“I don’t know,” Hongjoong answers honestly, because he doesn’t. Seonghwa is hot as hell and even with his hangup over Yeosang Hongjoong is man enough to admit he wouldn’t mind trying it out if Seonghwa got bored of pining. Yunho is clearly never going to be onboard for a relationship with him, so if Seonghwa said _okay let’s try it_ then…

Hongjoong sullenly swirls his fork through the mess of noodle and broth. “Maybe.”

Yunho goes silent, but his voice is choppy with _something_ when he finally says, “Good—good for you. That’s awesome that you found somebody so quickly.”

Before Hongjoong can deny anything, Yunho is stomping off, dumping the remainder of his lunch in the sink and declares he’s going to the gym for a while. Hongjoong watches him go, mouth gaped open, wondering what the fuck he’d done to make Yunho so mad.

**\-----------------**

By the time Wooyoung’s party rolls around, it’s been four months and Yunho has made it a point to stay sleeping in his own bed. They don’t fuck around. They don’t do any of the pre-approved _practicing_ they did before Hongjoong’s not-date with Seonghwa, even though Yunho was the one who wanted all the experience in the first place, so Hongjoong is understandably confused as to why he’s so totally against it now.

San and Wooyoung each rent out one half of a standalone duplex at the top of a high-rise only a ten minute cab ride south of campus. Yunho says they should just walk while the pregame vodka shots keep them warm and demands Hongjoong hold his hand for the duration of the trek over. 

“You should always have a partner when crossing the street,” Yunho sweetly informs him with a wiggle of his fingers. “Buddy system.”

“We’re not in grade school anymore,” Hongjoong complains, though ruins it by threading their fingers together anyway. “I’m pretty sure the concept of the buddy system doesn’t apply once you reach our age.”

Yunho gasps as if wounded, free hand held dramatically to his forehead. “You dare insult the time honored tradition of a man and his cross the street buddy? How can I look both ways at once?”

By some twist of fate, their friend groups have apparently been combined this whole time. Hongjoong finds out _Yunho’s_ Yeosang is _Seonghwa’s_ Yeosang and he honestly has to hold back the urge to laugh hysterically when he introduces Seonghwa to Yunho.

Yunho’s jaw flexes around a rictus grin. “Nice to meet you.”

Seonghwa only smiles guilelessly back. “Likewise!” He slides Hongjoong a sly look over the rim of his solo cup. “Hongjoong talks about you a lot.”

“I’m going to go say hi to Yeosang,” Hongjoong sweetly replies through his teeth, squawking when Seonghwa lunges at him to drag him down to the couch with a panicked, “No!”

More than someone to watch his flank when crossing the street, Hongjoong thinks Yunho needs someone to pull him away from the drink cooler and the open punch bowl. As soon as Seonghwa had passed him a cup full to the brim with what smells like watermelon White Claw and a healthy bottle or two of gin, Yunho disappeared to the other side of the room to inhale a can of the same. 

Hongjoong watches Yunho down shots with Yeosang and Jongho, a little concerned for his tolerance, when he’s joined by San dropping almost into his lap.

“So, how are you enjoying the party,” San hiccups right next to his ear over the sound of the speakers rumbling with too much bass. “Having fun?”

“Sure.” Hongjoong eases San back with a gentle nudge of his elbow. “I’m Hongjoong.”

“Oh, I know.” San’s eyes are sparkling, a mischievous glint reflecting there. “We _all_ know who you are.”

He blinks, says, “How,” and before he can get an answer Yunho is swooping between them to plant a slobbery kiss on San’s cheek. “San! Wooyoung is looking for you!”

Yunho turns to him when San, grumbling, wobbles to the kitchen where Wooyoung is holding a ladle threateningly at Yeosang’s head. “Where’s your boyfriend?”

“Seonghwa isn’t my boyfriend, Yunho. I don’t know how many times I have to explain that to you before you believe me.” Hongjoong tugs at Yunho’s sleeves until his friend plops into his lap, all gangly six feet of him. “Where’s _yours_ , smartypants?”

Yunho only grins and, with the confidence of someone who can’t remember more than two minutes at a time, drops a giggling, gin-flavored kiss to Hongjoong’s mouth. “Right here.”

**\-----------------**

Yunho either doesn’t remember that night or doesn’t want to mention it, so Hongjoong doesn’t either, but their usual morning routine feels stilted and awful for days afterward. Hongjoong knows Yunho only said it because he was drunk. He doesn’t believe for a second that Yunho thinks of him as more than a friend and sexual guinea pig and wishes there was a socially acceptable way to tell your best friend, “I know you only said that because you don’t want to lose out on easy access anal.” 

On the bright side, apparently something went down between Seonghwa and Yeosang on the balcony because he sends Hongjoong an excited _oh my fucking god what the fuck_ text along with a picture of his and Yeosang’s hand folded up intimately on a table. Hongjoong glares at it, at his own empty hand, and then responds with congratulations and an offer to send them both careening off a cliff for beating him to the punch. Even San sends him sad and conciliatory texts about being single and in love with his best friend.

“I am not in love with him, okay, I’m just—” Hongjoong searches for the right word. “Hypnotized by his dick? Dick-notized?”

“You’re definitely something, but I am telling you now it’s related to a four letter word starting with ‘L’.” San nudges their elbows together while they wait outside the lecture hall for Mingi and Jongho to emerge. “Don’t be a coward, hyung.”

“I’m not a coward,” Hongjoong snaps. 

San only offers a skeptical deadpan, “Uh huh,"

**\-----------------**

Study group runs long and by the time Hongjoong makes it home, dinner is cold and Yunho is sacked out asleep on their couch presumably waiting for him. Hongjoong doesn’t bother reheating the cold pasta, just bundles it up for lunch tomorrow and pokes at Yunho until he wakes up enough so they can brush their teeth together and fall into Hongjoong’s bed for the night.

Something wakes him up.

Hongjoong muzzily squints at his alarm clock to find bright neon _2:56_ glaring back at him. He'd been having one of his more interesting dreams where Yunho had him spread out on the kitchen island as if Hongjoong were a feast, mouth wet, fucking his fingers two at a time into Hongjoong’s hole before bending down—

Hongjoong gasps, then whimpers. Yunho is still asleep — still faintly grunting with half-formed snores — and is clumsily thrusting up in between Hongjoong’s legs, his dick hard and hot under the thin material of his underwear. Every soft drag, every shift of Yunho’s dick feels like it’s hitting Hongjoong’s _yes_ button with pinpoint accuracy. In his sleep, Yunho slips a hand down Hongjoong’s front, holds his cock against his belly and lets the rocking of their bodies meeting on each thrust create a delicious sizzling sort of friction.

Hongjoong gives up being quiet almost instantly. He flaps a hand back to fist Yunho’s hair and tugs while whispering a frantic, “Yunho, Yunho, _Yunho—_ ”

Yunho snorts himself awake with a low moan, hips stilling. “Fuck. Hongjoong?”

“Hey.” Hongjoong tries to get his breathing back under control. “You were uh — in your sleep.”

Yunho rolls his hips against him again. “Can I ask you for a favor?”

“Right now?”

Yunho nods. “Will you fuck me?”

God. Jesus. Hongjoong buries his mouth on his pillow to keep from making too much noise. “Yeah. Yeah, I mean if you—if we need to get a shower—”

“I already prepped while I was waiting for you.” Yunho rolls him over with a pout, his hair fluffed up on one side from the pillow and his face splotchy pink. “You took too long getting home.”

“Sorry.” Hongjoong swallows tight, tracing his palms up Yunho’s sides under his shirt watching Yunho’s eyes flutter closed, his fingers twisting up in Hongjoong’s shirt in pleasure. “Get the stuff and I’m game.”

Yunho kisses his forehead and comes stumbling back with a box and the same tube they’d used a few months ago still mostly full. He derobes, pulls at Hongjoong’s bottoms until they’re on the other side of the room out of the way, and plops himself down in Hongjoong’s lap as if either one of them is going to be able to finger him open at this angle.

Hongjoong laughs, shivery with anticipation. “Yunho, I can’t really reach—”

“I fingered myself for you.” Yunho regards him with a deeper frown to cover the neon red inundating his ears and his cheeks, spreading down his neck to compliment the brown of his nipples. “I won’t need much, I promise, just—just give it to me.”

Well. When your best friend slash roommate declares himself ready to take dick because he’d gone ahead and done all the grunt work already, who is Hongjoong to deny him?

So Hongjoong doesn't — couldn't — and slicks up the condom, holds Yunho open with his thumbs as best he can to barely wedge his tip into Yunho’s tight heat.

It’s different being on this end and if he thought getting fucked was claustrophobic, then this is getting trapped between two boulders with James Franco screaming in his ear. Yunho works his way down with a sigh until their hips are flush and Hongjoong’s breath is punching out of him in a single instantaneous whoosh, like Hongjoong's lungs are collapsing with the weight of him. He can feel Yunho’s heartbeat; feels him flexing against the intrusion; tracks the sluggish drip of lube over his balls on a short, barely there downstroke. Yunho has his hands clawed in Hongjoong’s shirt, his face screwed up in a way Hongjoong can’t figure out means pleasure or discomfort. 

Maybe all of the above judging by the way Yunho’s erection flags downward.

Hongjoong grabs hold of Yunho’s thighs trying to keep him steady and from getting ahead of himself. “How are you holding up?”

“I’m okay.” Yunho’s eyes are dark, sweat beading along his top lip. “You were right though, this does feel weird.”

Hongjoong trembles. He can even feel the vibrations when Yunho _talks_. How does anyone handle this without coming instantly? 

He must have squeezed his eyes shut, because Yunho traces the lines beneath his eyes tenderly and whispers, “Hongjoong, look at me.”

“‘M trying,” he swears. “You just feel so—” He trails off on a mangled wheeze, the feel of Yunho surrounding him like this almost too good and too much for him to handle.

Yunho narrows his eyes. “Yeah?” 

“Yes,” Hongjoong hisses, blinking up at him through the haze of tears clouding his vision. His hand had never once felt this good or this tight, so amazing it’s verging on the edge of pain. “Yunho, I can’t — uh — I’m not going to be able to move or anything I don’t think.”

"That’s fair.” Yunho shifts upward with a wince and drops back down with a deeper grimace. “I’m not sure this is really for me, but if it’ll get you off then I’ll stay—”

Hongjoong groans and cuts Yunho off with a hand held up at his face. “Idiot. If you don’t like it, then stop. I’m not going to cum if you’re going to sit there and look constipated at me.”

“That _is_ what it feels like,” Yunho muses, lifting off with a muttered, “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” Hongjoong throws the discarded condom to the side to deal with later and pulls Yunho back down so they’re side by side, his hands still sticky with lube crawling over the muscles shifting along Yunho’s ribs. “Try it again with a toy and see where that gets you.”

“Maybe.” Yunho’s eyebrows furrow. “When we did it, did you — I mean, you really liked it? Having a dick in you.”

The look on his face and the quiet, embarrassed way he asks is all it takes to break Hongjoong wide open, laughter bubbling up in his throat. He’d been so stupid looking at Yunho and seeing nothing but a friend, someone who wasn’t the size and shape of the space between his ribs as if Yunho hadn't always been there making himself at home.

“Yeah,” he manages, chest heaving, “I really liked having your dick in me, Yunho.”

Yunho, at last, seems pleased, hooks his hands on Hongjoong’s hips to pull him in flush, tip to toe. “Good,” he growls, “Hand me the lube.”

Yunho’s hands are huge. Wide enough that Hongjoong felt like he could hide in them when they were younger, so big they’d spent days in the sandbox experimenting to see how many rocks Yunho could hold without dropping any. Now Yunho’s hands are bigger, meatier, and can wrap around the both of them leaking hard against Hongjoong’s belly with ease, lube smoothing any would be friction away until it’s just a silken glide in the dark. Hongjoong can do nothing but hold on, bury his face in Yunho’s chest and gasp expletives while Yunho thumbs over their tips, slow and aching and then not slow at all.

When he's on the brink, when the familiar hardening next to his length pulses against him, Hongjoong decides to throw all caution to the wind and tugs Yunho down by the hair to hide his moans in Yunho's mouth. Yunho releases a surprised grunt and spills between them, staccato little _ahs_ escaping in the gap. Hongjoong is so blissed out he can't find the energy to care about the ruin of bedsheets beneath them, the mixture of their cum no doubt staining the linens he'd bought specifically for this new bed.

Yunho breaks away with a muted gasp and mocks, "Thought we agreed no kissing."

"Shut the fuck up," Hongjoong laughs and pulls him back down, greedy for this chance to take and _take_ without the guilt of daylight to shame him back into denial. 

**\-----------------**

“So, when you said the two of you weren’t dating,” San trails off.

They’re all hanging out at a new bar that had just opened up near the art department. Yunho and Wooyoung had just volunteered to grab everyone drinks while they wait for the two newest lovebirds to detach and reappear — after disappearing to parts unknown to more than likely trade handjobs next to a filthy sink in the bathroom — and Jongho and Mingi were off trying to bribe the DJ to play Mingi’s mixtape, which left Hongjoong and San to watch over their table.

“We aren’t.” Hongjoong balances another plastic cup on Jongho’s pyramid of terrible life choices involving Red Bull and Mingi.

San’s silence is as judgemental and shitty as Seonghwa is about Hongjoong’s clothing choices on any given day.

“I would know if we were dating,” Hongjoong assures him without prompting.

San muffles a snort, a disbelieving joyous tone to it that Hongjoong is debating smacking him over. 

“I would _know_ , San,” he says again, as if he needs to convince himself, too.

“Sure.”

Hongjoong grips San’s fingers underneath the table as they observe Yunho and Wooyoung each try to balance a tray of jello shots using only their forearms. Yunho catches him watching and grins, wiggles his fingers trapped beneath the tray while his face goes doughy from the stretch of his mouth. Hongjoong’s heart races.

“San. San, help me.”

San only pats his knuckles sympathetically and, unsympathetically, says, “No.”

**\-----------------**

Once it’s pointed out, Hongjoong can’t stop _noticing._ Yunho wakes him up and makes him breakfast. Yunho does almost all of the laundry without complaint because Hongjoong always does the dishes and cleans the horror of their bathroom every weekend. Yunho treats him to dinner. Yunho forces food and water down his throat when Hongjoong is too focused on deadlines to remember he has to eat. He makes hot packs and microwaves cotton bags full of rice to place on the worst of Yunho’s worn muscles while they watch variety shows together on the couch until it’s time for bed and they decide which room to fall asleep in together.

They act like a couple. They cohabitate like one. Hell, he and Yunho may as well be fucking married for how easily they slot into and out of each other’s day to day.

Hongjoong wonders when this started. 

Maybe the day he let Yunho wax his ass without even a token amount of protest should have been clue number one. Maybe it was when he climbed into Yunho’s lap without any kind of bribery to rub one out against each other on Yunho’s living room couch. Maybe it was when he agreed to fuck for practice, as if any sane person would do such a thing with their best friend without some kind of love or money involved. He’s a little pissed at himself that they’ve been this stupid — that _he’s_ been this stupid and obtuse — about everything leading up to the mindbending reality of being tits over ass for his friend, about Yunho being just as whipped as he is, and allows that energy to carry him through an hour long and semi-traumatizing shower.

He waits, barely breathing, for Yunho to come through the door and jumps with the chime of the lock pings his arrival.

Yunho’s face transforms from tired to _Hongjoong_ in a matter of milliseconds, which means Hongjoong’s heart threatens to burst up through his throat now that he knows what that smile means. “Hey! You’re home early.”

“I am.” Hongjoong meets him halfway, ears burning under the curious tilt of Yunho’s chin. “Remember when you said we should practice until we get boyfriends for real?”

Yunho’s expression falters. “Uh — of course, why?”

The strings of Yunho’s hoodie are worn and frayed which makes them easy to grab without losing his grip through the sweat collecting on his palms. Hongjoong tugs at them and says, wavering, “I’d like to stop practicing now,” and pulls Yunho down until their mouths connect, noses bumping awkwardly from the angle. He hopes the kiss conveys everything he’s been feeling, everything he _knows_ Yunho feels too.

Yunho, bright red and so dazed he can only formulate a nonsensical “Whuzza” of shock, follows Hongjoong to his room without prompting.

Hongjoong honestly hates that it’s come to this because Yunho has always been the more emotionally available and conversational of the two of them, but clearly Yunho cannot be trusted to use his words so Hongjoong is going to have to step in.

“So.” Hongjoong rolls his lips between his teeth and looks at anything that isn’t Yunho’s face. “So, it has come to my attention that we’re probably actually dating.”

Yunho only gapes at him. 

“Each other,” Hongjoong adds, “in case that wasn’t abundantly clear.”

Yunho’s mouth clicks shut. “Um, I—”

“And,” Hongjoong continues, because if he doesn’t say this shit now it’s never going to get said and they’ll be stuck in buddyfucking limbo _forever._ “And I would really appreciate it if you’d admit you’re in love with me so we can continue navigating anal together without disappointing my mother in the process.”

Yunho’s nose scrunches. “Your mom? What?”

“She’s really invested in our relationship.” Hongjoong can feel his nerves shaking themselves apart. “Focus, Yunho. The in love with me part is important.”

“I’ll say it if you say it first,” Yunho complains, already reaching forward to tug Hongjoong in by the space behind his knees. “Fuck, are you serious? You’re not just doing this to get laid are you?”

Hongjoong drops into Yunho’s lap, easy, as if he belongs there. Which in Hongjoong's humble opinion, he does. “Are _you_?”

“No.” Yunho looks at him as if he’s trying to find the lie, some hidden tell that Hongjoong isn’t invested in this, and, finding none, offers a simple, “I love you so fucking much, idiot,” and tumbles them back to the bed.

“You’re not allowed to be terrible at sex with anyone but me, got it?” Hongjoong sobs against his kneecaps, ankles held together in Yunho’s sure grip while his tongue dances gut churning circles over his hole. “Only me—”

“Wouldn’t want to be,” Yunho sweetly croons at him, replacing his tongue with his dick, sliding in and in, until Hongjoong is crying ugly and overwhelmed tears against Yunho’s shoulders where he’s holding on for dear life.

“Hey,” Hongjoong says in the fuzzy afterglow. “Don’t call me an idiot.”

“Well, see I would, but,” Yunho throws a leg over Hongjoong’s sticky thighs, “somebody in this room let me wax his ass and didn’t even think to say, _hey maybe I shouldn’t show off my butthole to my so-called best friend_.”

That’s fair, Hongjoong supposes. Still…

“I waxed your balls and you came on my hand.”

Yunho’s sigh takes on a dreamy quality. “Yeah. You should do that again.”

Hongjoong skates his hands over the ocean of bedsheets to hook their fingers together tight, squeezing for dear life as if Yunho is somehow going to disappear if he doesn’t. So Yunho knows he's joking when he offers only a fond, “Weirdo.”

“ _Your_ weirdo though.” Yunho squeezes back. 

If you had told him six months ago that he’d be here, wrapped up in Yunho’s bedsheets covered in Yunho’s cum and lube and a fair amount of tears, Hongjoong would have laughed himself sick. Because Yunho was only his friend and placed squarely in the off-limits brozone of his brain.

As it is he can only smile, giddy, and roll towards Yunho so that his whole body basically smears against him in one long sticky line while his boyfriend — boyfriend! — giggles his disgust. 

“Mine.”

**Author's Note:**

> please appreciate the double entendre of the title ty
> 
> \- Ash


End file.
